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Consumer culture -- the endless manufacture of desire -- is killing us. It knows no morality.
And ultimately, the newswire photo just compounds the problem, establishing its value -- this clever, colorful piece of drive-by eye candy -- as a cocktail of conscience with a twist of irony.
via www.google.com
10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Of monkeys and their music
University of Wisconsin-Madison Cotton-top tamarins grew calmer after they heard music compositions based on their own calm, friendly calls. But the monkeys became more agitated when University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology professor Charles Snowdon played music that contained elements of their own threatening or fearful calls. Photo: Bryce RichterNon-human primates do not generally respond to music; they rather prefer silence. But researchers found that cotton-top tamarin (Saguius oedipus), a rare South American monkey, though immune to human music, did respond to music.
08:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Big Freeze Plunged Europe Into Ice Age in Months
ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2009) — In the film The Day After Tomorrow, the world enters the icy grip of a new glacial period within the space of just a few weeks. Now new research shows that this scenario may not be so far from the truth after all.
11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Edible Antifreeze Saves Ice Cream
Food Chemists Use 'Edible Antifreeze' To Make Smoother Ice CreamJuly 1, 2008 — Chemists adding a tasteless edible protein called gelatin hydrolysate to ice cream find that it keeps ice crystals small, resulting in a smoother, more pleasing product. The protein inhibits the growth of ice crystals, keeping them small and preserving the creamy texture of ice cream.
Article says that people in the US eat 24 quarts a year, I certainly do more than my share to keep the average up.
11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Irish Church accused of abuse cover-up
Four archbishops turned a blind eye to child abuseA damning report into child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese has criticised the Catholic Church hierarchy for covering up the abuse.
The report investigated how Church and state authorities handled allegations of child abuse against 46 priests.
It found that the Church placed its own reputation above the protection of children in its care.
It also said that state authorities facilitated the cover-up by allowing the Church to operate outside the law.
Reacting to the report, the current Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said "no words of apology would ever be sufficient" and offered "to each and every survivor my apology, sorrow and shame".
The "Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin" covered a period from 1975 to 2004.
It has laid bare a culture of concealment where church leaders prioritised the protection of their own institution above that of vulnerable children in their care.
via news.bbc.co.uk
Could we just send all priests, bishops and cardinals to Afghanistan? Maybe they could all just kill each other and the world would be rid of two problems. Then send in the Marines to mop up whatever is left of either side - seems much simpler than just trying to eliminate the Taliban with US forces.
10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Greatest Show on Earth | The New York Academy of Sciences
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The Greatest Show on Earth | The New York Academy of Sciences
Posted using ShareThis
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Tweety Gets To The Heart of the Abortion Matter With Bishop Tobin
By Susie Madrak Tuesday Nov 24, 2009 6:00amVisit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
In a breathtakingly tight argument, Chris Matthews corners Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin, who has banned Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., from receiving Holy Communion due to his views on abortion.
09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
US builds up its bases in oil-rich South America
From the Caribbean to Brazil, political opposition to US plans for 'full-spectrum operations' is escalating rapidly
Sunday, 22 November 2009
09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
When in doubt, bat your eyelashes
at your disgruntled fans. That way, they won't notice the marmot on your head.
AP/Keith Srakocic
via www.dependablerenegade.com
08:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Best review of "Going Rogue" I've read yet.
There is some serious snark wattage here:
Going Rogue is not without merit. It certainly delivers what its intended audience wants. Readers who already like Palin will love it, much as America’s pedophiles will find the latest Jonas Brothers DVD to their liking. The authors’ talent for communicating the ex-Governor’s unique rhetorical style in print is remarkable – the Sesame Street cadence of her delivery and the intermittent Tourette’s-like winks leap off the page. The book, recession priced at just $9, is also an ideal gift for the Aunt or Uncle who assaults your email inbox with a dozen weekly communiqués on the President’s Kenyan birth and the constitutionality of income taxes.
via www.dependablerenegade.com
07:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
And speaking of Republican grifting...
The "saintly" Jenny Sanford? Not so much:
Eight days after her husband admitted to an affair in June, South Carolina First Lady Jenny Sanford filed paperwork to trademark her name.As first reported by local news outlets, a trademark request categorizing the first lady’s name as “goods and services” was filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on July 2.
The trademark application said it would be used for “product merchandising to be sold at online retail store featuring clothing, mugs and other household items; stickers, decals, notepads.”
Because there's nothing your loved ones would love more in their stockings than a Jenny Sanford, Wronged Wife™ coffee mug.
via www.dependablerenegade.com
01:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
She never stops playing the victim card.
What the FUCK did you think was going to happen when your 432 pages of fantasy were released?
Former Alaska Governor lashed out at the Associated Press Sunday for doing a fact-check on her memoir, "Going Rogue.""Amazingly, but not surprisingly, the AP somehow nabbed a copy of the book before it was released," she wrote on her Facebook page. "They're now erroneously reporting on the book's contents and are repeating many of the same things they spewed during the campaign and afterwards. We've heard 11 writers are engaged in this opposition research, er, "fact checking" research!"
Um...THEY'RE QUOTING FROM YOUR BOOK! So are you saying that your book is filled with lies?
via www.dependablerenegade.com
02:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
NotesSome cells are visible to the unaided eye
The smallest objects that the unaided human eye can see are about 0.1 mm long. That means that under the right conditions, you might be able to see an ameoba proteus, a human egg, and a paramecium without using magnification. A magnifying glass can help you to see them more clearly, but they will still look tiny.
Smaller cells are easily visible under a light microscope. It’s even possible to make out structures within the cell, such as the nucleus, mitochondria and chloroplasts. Light microscopes use a system of lenses to magnify an image. The power of a light microscope is limited by the wavelength of visible light, which is about 500 nm. The most powerful light microscopes can resolve bacteria but not viruses.
To see anything smaller than 500 nm, you will need an electron microscope. Electron microscopes shoot a high-voltage beam of electrons onto or through an object, which deflects and absorbs some of the electrons. Resolution is still limited by the wavelength of the electron beam, but this wavelength is much smaller than that of visible light. The most powerful electron microscopes can resolve molecules and even individual atoms.
How can an X chromosome be nearly as big as the head of the sperm cell?
No, this isn’t a mistake. First, there’s less DNA in a sperm cell than there is in a non-reproductive cell such as a skin cell. Second, the DNA in a sperm cell is super-condensed and compacted into a highly dense form. Third, the head of a sperm cell is almost all nucleus. Most of the cytoplasm has been squeezed out in order to make the sperm an efficient torpedo-like swimming machine.
The X chromosome is shown here in a condensed state, as it would appear in a cell that’s going through mitosis. It has also been duplicated, so there are actually two identical copies stuck together at their middles. A human sperm cell contains just one copy each of 23 chromosomes.
A chromosome is made up of genetic material (one long piece of DNA) wrapped around structural support proteins (histones). Histones organize the DNA and keep it from getting tangled, much like thread wrapped around a spool. But they also add a lot of bulk. In a sperm cell, a specialized set of tiny support proteins (protamines) pack the DNA down to about one-sixth the volume of a mitotic chromosome.
Adenine
The label on the nucleotide is not quite accurate. Adenine refers to a portion of the molecule, the nitrogenous base. It would be more accurate to label the nucleotide deoxyadenosine monophosphate, as it includes the sugar deoxyribose and a phosphate group in addition to the nitrogenous base. However, the more familiar “adenine” label makes it easier for people to recognize it as one of the building blocks of DNA.
Nifty size scaling via a slider from coffee bean down to a carbon atom
06:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
My husband called me last night all a-twitter and once I got him talking slow enough to understand that he wasn't going on about "six pennies", I could sympathize with the high level of enthusiasm. Earlier this year, "Sixth Sense Technology" from MIT---basically, a visual interface system that allows you and the computer in your cell phone to communicate in some truly astounding ways---was a big hit at TED. This week, at TED India, inventor Pranav Mistry announced that the technology will be released as open source...in a matter of months.
via boingboing.net
07:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Smelly poos with knobs on to Richard Dawkins. He's a complete loony. I, on the other hand am a Catholic, with the following perfectly sensible beliefs.
1. Everything requires an explanation, including the observable universe.
2. The observable universe was created by an unobservable Invisible Magic Friend. This explains the observable universe.
3. The Invisible Magic Friend has existed for all eternity and therefore requires no explanation. This is entirely consistent with point 1.
4. The Invisible Magic Friend comes in three lumps: Father, Son and mum Holy Ghost.
5. There is an Invisible Magic Baddy called the Devil, who's constantly tempting people to do bad things and stop being Catholics.
5b. Every baby is born a sinner, stained with the sin of Eve, who ate a piece of fruit on the command of the Devil, then disguised as a talking snake.
6. The Invisible Magic Friend revealed himself to a bunch of Middle Eastern Semitic tribes starting about 700 B.C.E. All the other gods of the Persians, Romans, Egyptians, Greeks, Norse and Indian were just made up. Only the god of Abraham is the real Invisible Magic Friend.
7. We were all condemned to eternal damnation by the all loving Invisible Magic Friend because of the talking snake incident and it's too good for us if you ask me.
8. The Invisible Magic Friend sent an Invisible Magic Messenger, with invisible magic white wings, called Gabriel to tell a young woman in Palestine that she was pregnant thanks to the third lump of the Invisible Magic Friend who had impregnated her with the extra chromosomes needed to conceive, and the child would be called Emmanuel, so she called him Jesus.
9. Mary's fiancé, Joseph was a bit miffed at Mary being pregnant and having to remain a virgin for the rest of her life, but she explained about the third lump of the Invisible Magic Friend so he married her anyway.
10. Jesus did all sorts of amazing things: turning water into wine, walking on water, redoing the Elisha feeding thousands trick, spitting on people to cure them, transforming into something, raising from the dead.
11. Jesus got a bit too uppity so the Romans crucified him.
12. Two days later, he rose from the dead in accordance with the prophecy that he'd rise three days later.
13. Jesus' death was actually a sacrifice of the second lump of the Invisible Magic Friend to all three lumps of the Invisible Magic Friend. This sacrifice was adequate compensation for the talking snake affair and you now only had to spend eternity in agony if, on average, you aren't terribly nice while you inhabit the observable universe or until recently, you weren't a Catholic.
14. Before going up into the sky on a cloud, Jesus said, "Peter, I'm leaving you in charge of the observable universe. Here are some magic powers."
15. Peter went to Rome and gave his magic powers to lots of other people.
16. Only people with external genitalia can have magic powers (obviously).
17. The magic powers consist of: turning ordinary water into magic water, turning ordinary oil into magic oil, forgiving people's sins by saying three Hail Mary's as an alternative to eternal damnation, turning bread and wine into the flesh and blood of the second lump of the Invisible Magic Friend, consuming him, thus recreating the original sacrifice 2,000 years ago, and in the case of being top priest, being infallible. All this, is best done in the language of the Roman Empire.
18. Deliberately not having as many children as possible is a sin, unless you're one of the men with magic powers who mustn't ever touch anything hairy, wobbly or dangly, or even think about touching anything hairy, wobbly or dangly.
19. Having sex for fun is a sin.
20. When men with magic powers are discovered buggering altar boys, the appropriate action is to move them where there are some new boys and make the victims promise never to tell anyone because it was all their fault anyway, the little teasers. This turns you from just being Most Reverend into being Eminent.
21. Poofs are an inherent moral evil and a greater danger to the planet than global warming.
Thank the Invisible Magic Friend I'm not one of those dribbling loonies like Richard Dawkins.
07:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Continue reading http://www.centerforinquiry.net/news/cfi_releases_statement_from_ibn_warraq_in_response_to_fort_hood_tragedy/#CFI Releases Statement from Ibn Warraq in Response to Fort Hood Tragedy
November 11, 2009
Denying Reality, or the Heavy Cost of Political Correctness
By Ibn Warraq
In the wake of the murder of 13 and the wounding of 38 soldiers at Fort Hood on November 5, media analysts, politicians, and other sundry experts scrambled to present the accused perpetrator of the acts, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, as a victim. In so doing they served, knowingly or otherwise, as apologists for radical Islam. From CNN to the New York Times, NPR to the Washington Post, the killings were presented as a result of racism. They were attributed to fear of deployment in Afghanistan and harassment from other soldiers. Cited were Major Hasan’s supposed maladjustment to his life and his sense of not belonging, pre-traumatic stress disorder, and various personal and mental problems. All these explanations are variations on what I have called “the Root Cause Fallacy,” which has been committed time and again since the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001. The Root Cause Fallacy was designed to deflect attention away from Islam, in effect to exonerate Islam, which, we are told, is never to blame for acts of violence. On this view we must not hold a great world religion of peace responsible when individuals of that faith resort to force. We must dig deeper: the real cause is poverty, U.S. foreign policy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Western colonialism and exploitation, marital problems of individuals, and so on. The present “psychological” interpretations in the case of Major Hasan are just the latest example of the Root Cause Fallacy at work.
12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Solar System...to Scale
A collection of artist's impressions and photo illustrations of the solar system.
01:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Rainbow in the night sky
A ghostly image captured on camera by a photographer in North Yorkshire shows a night-time rainbow created by the light of the moon.
Rainbow: Rainbows are usually created when sunlight is reflected by raindrops, but in this case the moonlight caused the image. Photo: NATIONAL PICTURESPhotographer Chris Walker was returning to his home in Richmond, North Yorkshire, when he saw this rainbow emerge through the rain.
He said: "I noticed something odd in the sky as I was driving home.
"A near full Moon was behind me and the wind was blowing a gale and rain was being driven from clouds on the horizon.
"The moon was so bright that when I arrived home it was obvious that the object in the sky was a rainbow illuminated by moonlight."
Rainbows are usually created when sunlight is reflected by raindrops, but in this case the moonlight caused the image.
Moonlight rainbows are quite rare as the phenomena requires a combination of very dark skies, the moon at less than 42 degrees high in the sky, and rain falling opposite the moon.
Mr Walker said: "As moonlight is many thousands of times fainter than sunshine the bow is many times fainter and only seen when the moon is near full.
"Even so the eye finds it difficult to discern colours with night vision, but despite that I could even see the red at the top of the bow."
The ephemeral image is reminiscent of the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, which illuminate the night skies in polar regions with a beautiful display of colours.
10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Pat Robertson on hate crimes bill: ‘The noose has tightened around the necks of Christians.’
Yesterday on the Christian Broadcasting Network, televangelist Pat Robertson aired a segment slamming President Obama for signing the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law. Extending hate crimes protection to the gay and transgendered community, Robertson argued, was a targeted attack on homophobic Christians like himself. Robertson said the new law is the latest example of a “noose” tightening around “the necks of Christians.” Later in the segment, he implied Democrats in Congress were “opposed to many of the fundamental Christian beliefs”:
PAT ROBERTSON: The noose has tightened around the necks of Christians to keep them from speaking out on certain moral issues. And it all was embodied in something called the Hate crimes bill that President Obama said was a major victory for America. I’m not sure if America was the beneficiary. [...] We have voted into office a group of people who are opposed to many of the fundamental Christian beliefs of our nation. And they hold to radical ideology, and they are beginning put people sharing their points of view into high office. And not only that, they not only have control of both houses of Congress.
Watch it:
Robertson, who has a long history of preaching vitriolic homophobia, declared earlier this year that gay marriage would lead to a “legalization of polygamy, bestiality, child molestation and pedophilia.”
12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Who has killed more, Satan or God?
And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. Job 1:7
In a previous post, I counted the number of people that were killed by God in the Bible. I came up with 2,391,421, which, of course, greatly underestimates God's total death toll, since it only includes those killings for which specific numbers are given. No attempt was made to include the victims of Noah's flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the many plagues, famines, fiery serpents, etc., with which the good book is filled. Still, 2 million is a respectable number even for world class killers.
But how does this compare with Satan? How many did he kill in the Bible?
Well I can only find ten, and even these he shares with God, since God allowed him to do it as a part of a bet. I'm talking about the seven sons and three daughters of Job.
via dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com
10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Arctic Lake Sediments Show Warming, Unique Ecological Changes In Recent Decades
ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2009) — An analysis of sediment cores indicates that biological and chemical changes occurring at a remote Arctic lake are unprecedented over the past 200,000 years and likely are the result of human-caused climate change, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.
08:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Truth About The Evils Of Vaccination
The information below began as a blog comment at Bad Astronomy, in an effort to address the common myths and misinformation spouted by those who are against vaccines (anti-vaxers), though the information can also be useful for some general vaccine questions that are not necessarily "anti-vax". At the urging of others and with the help of Eric TF Bat, this information now has a permanent home. It is intended as a resource for arguing the primary points made by anti-vaxers and is not offered as medical advice. I strongly encourage you to follow the links in the text and under the Additional Resources section. Finally, please feel free to send me feedback. Enjoy!
Table of Contents
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Pharyngula http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/rich_insane_god0.php
Category: Weirdness
At last, we have a simple definition of an atheist.
(via GrrlScientist)
11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
"It's about why I think science is one of the supreme things that makes life worth living," he says. "We are fantastically privileged to exist at all, but then we also have the privilege of understanding this beautiful world in which we find ourselves. that should make us all the more eager to soak up as much as we possibly can of understanding our world and our place in it before we die." Or, as the book puts it: "Mysteries do not lose their poetry when solved. Quite the contrary: the solution often turns out more beautiful than the puzzle... " He brilliantly berates those of us (all of us, probably) who succumb to the "anaesthetic of familiarity," by which he means allowing yourself to stop noticing that the world around you is coruscating with wonder. But he also shows how little he understands common humanity: "Just think," he enthuses, "instead of reading the football results you can read about distant galaxies!"
10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sean Hannity is a twit
Category: Godlessness
As I mentioned before, the Coalition of Reason is putting some positive, pro-atheism ads in the NY subways. As expected, of course, some Christians are upset about this. Their reaction is no surprise. The inanity of their reaction is also no surprise. For a beautiful example of a truly stupid response, you can rely on Sean Hannity.
Can you imagine the outrage if a Christian group put pro-God ads in the New York City subways? What outrage.
I can imagine it, because as that link points out, there have been multitudes of pro-God ads there for years. I was also familiar with seeing them all over the place in the Philadelphia subways when I lived there, and I can describe perfectly the "outrage" they generated. Look in a mirror, roll your eyes, and sigh…that's it.
That link also points out that Sean Hannity doesn't know, because he never rides the NY subway system.
Here's the Arizona COR video. Watch that and imagine Sean Hannity's outrage.
Posted by PZ Myers at 11:41 AM • 45 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
via scienceblogs.com
01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sugar and Spice? Rockstar Annie Leibovitz Serves Up the Obamas
(Click for larger size)
I wanted to look at the pre-holiday portrait of the first family released by the White House today. And, though I know the Obamas love photography and quality photographers, and also know a thing or two about having their picture taken, you can't be overly naive in hiring the likes of rockstar and celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz.
With Obama in shirt sleeves, there is a nice mix of formal and informal here, with the theme of black-and-white apparently the fashion of the season. (Note the BAZAAR Tina Fey cover posted yesterday.) One thing Leibovitz seems to be doing is playing up the identity of Barack as shiny; luminescent (the shirt's sort of blinding); pure; innocent (especially, with little Sasha as sidekick); and ever relaxed.
What is curious about the monochrome, though, is how Leibovitz unbalances the photo with the President and Sasha mostly in white, grouped together, and Michelle and Malia primarily in black (with Michelle almost disappearing by virtue of the contrast).
From looking at family photos, it's not unusual that Malia would be lovingly draped over her mother that way. It is interesting, however, that the ultimate selection would be one in which America's First Lady (by virtue of the dress color, Malia's overwhelming and intimate presence, and the difference between her highly posed look and Malia's highly relaxed one) would
marginalize herbe marginalized so much.So, Mom downplayed and a more innocent skew to the left, huh? My take is that Leibovitz (Leibovitz being Leibovitz) was more than happy to compromise Michelle, along with the larger and safer themes of family and holiday (cute move with the Green Room and the red Christmasy tree, by the way) to subtlety feature Malia's legs, that curve of the body in the little girl dress and that intimate school-girl gaze.
via www.google.com
08:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
This voter is a little upset with the economy and bank bailout
Very, very, very NSFW. You don't have to agree with everything he says but it's easy to appreciate his frustration. Watching him take a baseball bat to objects while walking through our dysfunctional economic system reminds me of why I took up cycling this year. Six hours on the saddle helps me burn off similar frustration and I don't need to watch out for flying objects.
07:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
FLOTUS ... Like It's 1959
I find this brilliant the way it pairs old school and new, and also promotes the Obamas as the folks next door.
Shades of classic TV, oldies rock and throwback sport jerseys, encountering our still-new First Lady inside a hula hoop -- that elegant artifact of cultural nostalgia -- is wonderfully engaging. ...Of course, that "there you go" expression doesn't hurt either.
via www.google.com
07:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Franken Kicks Ass
tip to Cirano
via onegoodmove.org
07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Late Night: The South Carolina GOP Supper Club Presents “The Merchants of Prejudice”
By: watertiger Monday October 19, 2009 8:00 pmThe only food Jewish people eat.
Oh, South Carolina. As Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, “there you go again.”
After a South Carolinian Democrat accused Senator Jim DeMint of failing to bring home enough federal funding for the poverty-stricken state, two county GOP leaders rushed to the Senator’s defense, crafting an op-ed for for a local paper yesterday in which they fell back on this antiquated, but still very offensive, analogy:
There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.
The poor dears, bless their hearts. They just can’t help themselves, can they? Jews love money? No shit, Shylock! They also love charging usurious interest rates, diamonds, and global media empire-building! Wait, give me a few more minutes, and I’ll come up with more asinine stereotypes.
Every time the South Carolina GOP lets spill another racist or religious slur–and their well seems bottomless–they only serve to reinforce the negative stereotype the rest of the world harbors of Southern Republicans as inbred, chaw-spittin’, rusted out pickup-drivin’, “anybody not like them”-hatin’ crackers. I find it remarkable that the state manages to function at all, with so many pea-brained yokels in positions of power.
But I would be remiss if I didn’t thank the South Carolina GOP for providing me and other reality-based purveyors of snark with a practically endless supply of material. From the state’s Appalachian Trail Hiker and its elected knuckle-draggers to those morons down in Louisiana (*cough* Judge “I Let the Coloreds Use My Bathroom” Bardwell *cough*), it’s like the New Confederacy picked up the gauntlet thrown down by the King of the Idiots, George Bush. Those are mighty big shoes to fill, boys. By the way, I can get them for you wholesale.
P.S. And think about it: with a name like “DeMint”, he should know from money!
Thanks, I’ll be here all week. Try the Congressional Pork . . . unless you keep kosher. Oy.
via firedoglake.com
Loved the link to the "never you mind the white sheet, I'm not a racist, I let the coloreds us my bathroom"
11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
10:32 PM in GOP | Permalink | Comments (0)
Rape is now a pre-existing condition
Turner had let the men buy her drinks at a bar in Fort Lauderdale. The next thing she knew, she said, she was lying on a roadside with cuts and bruises that indicated she had been raped. She never developed an HIV infection. But months later, when she lost her health insurance and sought new coverage, she ran into a problem.
Turner, 45, who used to be a health insurance underwriter herself, said the insurance companies examined her health records. Even after she explained the assault, the insurers would not sell her a policy because the HIV medication raised too many health questions. They told her they might reconsider in three or more years if she could prove that she was still AIDS-free.
08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
04:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Posted on: October 18, 2009 9:09 AM, by Ed Brayton
Roughly the same number of people showed up for last weekend's gay rights march in Washington DC as showed up for the 9/12 Tea Party. How did Fox News report the 9/12 march? With multiple correspondents and camera crews, not to mention producers pumping up the crowds on camera. How did they cover the gay rights march? Well, they didn't. Jon Stewart has some fun with it.
via scienceblogs.com
05:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
can ask ultra-feminist Meghan McCain why her dad thinks it's okay to gang-rape women:
Here is freshman Minnesota senator Al Franken's first-ever legislative action, a relatively simple, almost laughably surefire bill requiring the Pentagon no longer do business with any contractor -- hi, Halliburton! -- that requires its employees to agree that she cannot sue said contractor if she is, oh let's just say, gang raped by its employees.You read that right. It's a can't-sue-us-if-you're-raped clause. In a U.S. government contract. Aimed squarely at Halliburton. Thanks, Dick Cheney!
First, you are required get over your initial disgust that such legislation is even necessary, that such clauses even exist and that the Pentagon is already doing business with such contractors (hi, Halliburton/KBR!), and that there has already been a truly horrible case validating it, wherein a 20-year-old female employee was allegedly gang-raped by contractors, locked in a shipping container, abused every way from Sunday, and found out later she was unable to sue.
...The most repellant part is the 30 U.S. senators -- Republicans each and every one -- who just stepped forth to vote against the Franken amendment, essentially saying no, women should have no right to sue if they are sexually abused or gang raped, Halliburton and its ilk must be protected at all costs, and by the way we hereby welcome Satan into our rancid souls forevermore. God bless America.
That's the party you have sworn fealty to, Meghan. They think it's perfectly acceptable for a woman to be denied legal recourse after a heinous crime has been committed against her.
via www.google.com
The 30 REPUBLICAN SENATORS WHO APPROVE OF GANG RAPE AND SEXUAL ABUSE -they voted against the amendment
| NAYs ---30 | ||
| Alexander (R-TN) Barrasso (R-WY) Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN) | Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Gregg (R-NH) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE) | Kyl (R-AZ) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Wicker (R-MS) |
05:12 PM in GOP | Permalink | Comments (0)
Bill Maher vs. the Flu Vaccine
By Tara Parker-PopeMonica Almeida/The New York Times Bill Maher
The talk show host Bill Maher is best known for his pointed political commentary. But lately he has been dispensing surprisingly unscientific medical advice about flu and the vaccine that prevents it.
Mr. Maher recently told his Twitter followers that people who get flu shots are “idiots.” On his Friday HBO show “Real Time With Bill Maher,” he explained his opposition to the flu vaccine during an interview with Bill Frist, a heart surgeon who was a Republican senator from Tennessee.
Mr. Maher questioned letting someone stick “a disease into your arm,” wrongly implying that the flu shot contains a live virus. The flu shot is a killed vaccine. (Only the nasal mist vaccine contains a weakened live virus.)
He said he did not believe that healthy people were vulnerable to dying from the new H1N1 virus. This contradicts statements from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that young, healthy people from ages 5 to 24 appear particularly vulnerable to this flu. About a third of the 76 children who have died of H1N1 since April have had no underlying health problems.
Something is really wrong when Bill Frist is the voice of sanity.
01:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
The Futility of Defending the Targets
This is just silly:
Beaver Stadium is a terrorist target. It is most likely the No. 1 target in the region. As such, it deserves security measures commensurate with such a designation, but is the stadium getting such security?[..]
When the stadium is not in use it does not mean it is not a target. It must be watched constantly. An easy solution is to assign police officers there 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is how a plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge was thwarted -- police presence. Although there are significant costs to this, the costs pale in comparison if the stadium is destroyed or damaged.
The idea is to create omnipresence, which is a belief in everyone's minds (terrorists and pranksters included) that the stadium is constantly being watched so that any attempt would be futile.
Actually, the Brooklyn Bridge plot failed because the plotters were idiots and the plot -- cutting through cables with blowtorches -- was dumb. That, and the all-too-common police informant who egged the plotters on.
But never mind that. Beaver Stadium is Pennsylvania State University's football stadium, and this article argues that it's a potential terrorist target that needs 24/7 police protection.
The problem with that kind of reasoning is that it makes no sense. As I said in an article that will appear in New Internationalist:
To be sure, reasonable arguments can be made that some terrorist targets are more attractive than others: aeroplanes because a small bomb can result in the death of everyone aboard, monuments because of their national significance, national events because of television coverage, and transportation because of the numbers of people who commute daily. But there are literally millions of potential targets in any large country (there are five million commercial buildings alone in the US), and hundreds of potential terrorist tactics; it's impossible to defend every place against everything, and it's impossible to predict which tactic and target terrorists will try next.Defending individual targets only makes sense if the number of potential targets is few. If there are seven terrorist targets and you defend five of them, you seriously reduce the terrorists' ability to do damage. But if there are a million terrorist targets and you defend five of them, the terrorists won't even notice. I tend to dislike security measures that merely cause the bad guys to make a minor change in their plans.
And the expense would be enormous. Add up these secondary terrorist targets -- stadiums, theaters, churches, schools, malls, office buildings, anyplace where a lot of people are packed together -- and the number is probably around 200,000, including Beaver Stadium. Full-time police protection requires people, so that's 1,000,000 policemen. At an encumbered cost of $100,000 per policeman per year, probably a low estimate, that's a total annual cost of $100B. (That's about what we're spending each year in Iraq.) On the other hand, hiring one out of every 300 Americans to guard our nation's infrastructure would solve our unemployment problem. And since policemen get health care, our health care problem as well. Just make sure you don't accidentally hire a terrorist to guard against terrorists -- that would be embarrassing.
The whole idea is nonsense. As I've been saying for years, what works is investigation, intelligence, and emergency response:
We need to defend against the broad threat of terrorism, not against specific movie plots. Security is most effective when it doesn't make arbitrary assumptions about the next terrorist act. We need to spend more money on intelligence and investigation: identifying the terrorists themselves, cutting off their funding, and stopping them regardless of what their plans are. We need to spend more money on emergency response: lessening the impact of a terrorist attack, regardless of what it is. And we need to face the geopolitical consequences of our foreign policy and how it helps or hinders terrorism.
via www.schneier.com
Are people in Pennsylvania really this stupid? It looks like at least one "news" editor and a retired cop from NY are.
04:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Analogies I wish I'd written.
While I don't always agree with Bill Maher, I have to give him kudos for this:
"Don't ask, don't tell" has always been bad policy that was made out of a bullshit political compromise. You know, like you're doing now with health care. It never made sense to begin with: "Here in the Army we're all about honor. And trusting the man next to you. Now lie to my face about your sexuality, Johnson, or I'll report you behind your back." But forget all the good arguments for repeal, like because it was promised to us in the campaign or because it gets lonely on a submarine. Do it because it'll make Rush Limbaugh explode like a bag full of meat dropped from a helicopter. Do it because it'll make Sarah Palin go rogue in her pants.
The whole piece is good.
via www.dependablerenegade.com
10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Bachmann: Obama Will Abort Babies at School!
Posted on: October 5, 2009 9:23 AM, by Ed Brayton
The latest bit of lunacy from Michelle Bachmann: Obama wants kids to take field trips to abortion clinics to kill their babies and not tell their parents:
But parents are going to excluded from Planned Parenthood as they write these clinics because the bill orders that these clinics protect patient privacy and student records. What does that mean? It means that parents will never know what kind of counsel and treatment that their children are receiving. And as a matter of fact, the bill goes on to say what's going to go on -- comprehensive primary health services, physicals, treatment of minor acute medical conditions, referrals to follow-up for specialty care -- is that abortion? Does that mean that someone's 13 year-old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have their abortion, be back and go home on the school bus that night? Mom and dad are never the wiser.She said that. On the House floor. Never mind that the bill specifically requires any and all actions on the part of a School Based Health Clinic to conform with all laws regarding parental rights and privacy:
(i) SBHC services will be provided in accordance with Federal, State, and local laws governing--(I) obtaining parental or guardian consent; and
(II) patient privacy and student records, including section 264 of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and section 444 of the General Education Provisions Act;
The word delusional comes to mind.
via scienceblogs.com
07:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
In the evening of January 15, 2008, a 31-year-old tech consultant named Gregg Housh sat down at the computer and paid a visit to one of his favorite Web sites, the message board known as 4chan. Like most of the 5.9 million people who visit the site every month, Housh was looking for a few cheap laughs. Filled with hundreds of thousands of brief, anonymous messages and crude graphics uploaded by the site's mostly male, mostly twentysomething users, 4chan is a fountainhead of twisted, scatological, absurd, and sometimes brilliant low-brow humor. It was the source of the lolcat craze (affixing captions like "I Can Has Cheezburger?" to photos of felines), the rickrolling phenomenon (tricking people into clicking on links to Rick Astley's ghastly "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video), and other classic time-wasting Internet memes. In short, while there are many online places where you can educate yourself, seek the truth, and contemplate the world's injustices and strive to right them, 4chan is not one of them.
Yet today, Housh found 4chan grappling with an injustice no Internet-humor fan could ignore. Days earlier, a nine-minute video excerpt of an interview with Tom Cruise had appeared unauthorized on YouTube and other Web sites. Produced by the Church of Scientology, the clip showed Cruise declaring himself and his co-religionists to be, among other remarkable things, the "only ones who can help" at an accident site. For the online wiseasses of the world, the clip was a heaven-sent extra helping of the weirdness Tom Cruise famously showed on Oprah. But then, suddenly, it was gone: Scientologists had sent takedown notices to sites hosting the video, effectively wiping it from the Web.
Housh and other channers knew that Scientology had a long history of using copyright law to silence Internet-based critics. But this time, maybe because the church was stifling not just unflattering content but potential comedy gold, the tactic seemed to inflame the chortling masses. That evening, Housh logged in to an IRC channel frequented by like-minded chuckleheads and started talking with five others about the Cruise video. There was a sense that something must be done, but what? One of them logged out and posted a call to action on 4chan and some similar sites. By the middle of the night, 30 people had joined the chat. Within a couple of days, a consensus emerged: They would take down the main Scientology Web site with a massive distributed denial-of-service attack, or DDoS.
By the time the attacks started on January 18, Housh and many of the now 200 others on the chat channel were devoting every spare moment to the cause: "We were like, OK, we have 24 hours today. None of us need to sleep. Get your caffeine. What's the next step?"
Someone suggested they create a press release. Housh and four others broke off into a side channel to work on it while the DDoS attacks unfolded. They figured they should explain the goals of their spontaneous uprising, but what exactly were those goals? "We had no fricking clue what we were doing," Housh says. "We didn't mean to do it in the first place." They were still more of a riot than a movement—a faceless, leaderless mob growing daily as new adherents flocked in. None of them knew one another, even by pseudonyms, since as a rule there was only one username throughout the community. In fact, it was a standing in-joke on 4chan and related sites that their collective output was the product of a single hive-mind entity, known by that same username: Anonymous.
Instead of a press release, Housh and the others made a video introduction in the name and voice of the hive mind itself. Thrown together in a few days of furious collaboration, it appeared on YouTube on January 21, titled "Message to Scientology."
"Hello, leaders of Scientology. We are Anonymous," the clip began in a robotic, software-generated voice-over accompanied by stock footage of clouds rolling over desolate cityscapes. "Your campaigns of misinformation, your suppression of dissent, your litigious nature: All of these things have caught our eye," the voice explained. "For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind—and for our own enjoyment—we shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form." The message ended, as it had begun, on a pitch-perfect note of sci-fi comic book menace: "We are Legion," the robot voice intoned. "We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."
via www.wired.com
01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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06:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Texas has state-sanctioned murder
The story of Cameron Todd Willingham (via Digby) ought to be read by everyone. Willingham seems to have been a kind of Texan dumbass, an uneducated, wife-beating piece of work, but he was also the father of three children, who he, by all accounts, loved. Those kids died in a house fire. Forensic 'experts' declared the fire an arson, Willingham was arrested, tried, and convicted of murder, and was executed.
Only problem: he didn't do it. The fire experts were good ol' boys who were operating on folklore and fairy tales about how fires propagated; real experts have looked at the scene and since declared that it was an accidental fire. Nobody killed those little girls, but their father was killed for their deaths.
That's not the most disturbing part of the story to me. You have to watch these videos of Judge John Jackson (he was prosecutor in the case, and is now a judge). He openly admits that the evidence for arson was weak, and that he looked at the circumstances to determine Willingham's guilt. Those circumstances? Willingham was a low-class ruffian with tattoos of skulls who like heavy metal music. Therefore, he was probably a satanist. Therefore, he probably killed his children.
I'm not joking. That was the basis for this smug cracker's determination of guilt, that led directly to his execution. Why not just criminalize tattoos and Metallica? It would make it easy to round up the riff-raff and exterminate them.
The state of Texas murdered an innocent man, and we can see the whole chain of incompetence, bigotry, and cowardice that led to the tragedy, from this ass of a prosecutor to Governor Perry, who refused to heed the evidence of malfeasance. Why aren't all of them being impeached or fired, and facing criminal charges in a court of law? Is it because they don't have any tattoos and listen to patriotic tripe from Lee Greenwood, Brooks & Dunn, and Tim McGraw?
End the death penalty everywhere. Drum the red-necked blundering boobs out of office, at the very leas
via scienceblogs.com
Not surprising considering it's Texas. They keep threatening to secede, wish they would. Then they could join other other murdering nations like Saudi Arabia and most of the Middle East.
02:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
via www.youtube.com
09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Turning Kids Into Criminals
Posted on: September 24, 2009 9:23 AM, by Ed Brayton
I don't have any idea who the author is of this blog post but he has written one of the most important essays you will ever read. It's about the criminalization of adolescent sex. Take a look at this chart:
The age at which the most people are convicted of "sexual assault" is fourteen. Fourteen. And no doubt some of those were actual sexual assaults. But the vast majority of them were not. The vast majority of them were kids convicted of statutory rape. And they are then, in most states, considered sex offenders for the rest of their lives. A taste of why this essay is so important, first on how easy it is to become one of those statistics:
via scienceblogs.com
10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
It's pathetic. For every step forward we take to improve women's reproductive rights in this country, we take at least five steps back. The latest example: women who are forced to buy individual insurance plans (i.e., are not on employer-based plans protected by Title VII and who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid) are utterly screwed if they find themselves in a family way in the wrong states:
[M]ost individual health insurance markets don’t cover maternity care. In fact, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, only 14 states have a requirement for such coverage, and the number of plans without maternity coverage continues to rise dramatically. Why? Anthem Blue Cross — which has been actively fighting health care reform — considers pregnancy optional and therefore not necessary to insure.
You read that right. In 36 states, pregnancy is considered optional, even in those areas where abortion providers who haven't been assassinated are more than a "short ride" away.
Following this logic, one would assume, then, that since insurance companies consider pregnancy optional, they would provide coverage for female contraceptives under these individual plans, as a hedge against those horridly expensive, optional vaginal deliveries. One would assume wrong, of course. Birth control is still not covered under these plans.
(Interestingly, I'm still looking for the amounts insurance companies pay out annually for Viagra and Cialis prescriptions... )
Moreover, the National Women's Law Center issued a study on the major-league failure by the individual health insurance market to serve women, and it just gets worse: (.pdf link)
Except where prohibited in ten states, or limited in two states, insurance carriers are free to charge women and men different premiums for individually-purchased insurance under a practice known as gender rating. This discriminatory and arbitrary practice creates substantial financial barriers for women seeking to obtain the health care they need. [emphasis mine]
Terrific. Women, who are still paid an average of 75¢ to the dollar, face even greater financial pain because of their gender.
Oh, and by the way: if your husband beats you because, thanks to this economy, he's out of a job and the insurance premiums have bankrupted the both of you and he can't stand listening to the optional baby cry anymore? So sorry. Any injuries you sustain aren't covered, either, because in 8 states (and D.C.), being an abused spouse qualifies as a pre-existing condition, as well.
Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you're more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.
In human terms, it's a second punishment for a victim of domestic violence.
We make her bear and raise our children
And then we leave her flat for being a fat old mother hen
We tell her home is the only place she should be
Then we complain that shes too unworldly to be our friend
Like I said: it's pathetic. We've still got a very long way to go, baby.
http://firedoglake.com/2009/09/17/late-night-sorry-lady-but-your-gender-is-a-pre-existing-condition/
08:17 PM in GOP | Permalink | Comments (0)
Think about it.
If you ever in your life - we're talking some of us have been around
for decades - went to the doctor and complained of a cough, of feeling
dizzy, of feeling tired a lot, or if you ever had one single test that
showed high cholesterol, but since then your cholesterol was fine - if
you didn't declare all of those as pre-existing conditions, your
insurance thinks they have the right to drop you when you really get
sick.
Seriously, who out there has any idea of every single
little thing you've ever mentioned to your doctor of the past twenty or
forty years? A cough? Fatigue? This is outrageous. It's also typical.
We need far more regulation of this decrepid industry than is being
proposed. And sending them millions of more customers is a truly scary
thought.
...
America Blog
http://www.americablog.com/2009/09/insurance-company-cancels-17-year-old.html
03:42 PM in GOP | Permalink | Comments (0)
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